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Benjamin Steinberg
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The answer is no.

In a cancellative monoid left invertible elements are right invertible. If yx =1 then xyx=x and so xy =1 by cancellation. So you are asking to invert a given element in some cancellative monoid.

Take a fg cancellative monoid M not embeddable in a group. Invert the generators one by one to embed M in the group of units of a monoid and get a contradiction.

Benjamin Steinberg
  • 38.6k
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  • 186